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FBI director announces 'Operation Summer Heat 2' in Martinsburg, touts prior arrests and new DNA tools
Summary
At a Martinsburg event the FBI director announced Operation Summer Heat 2, described last year’s enforcement metrics and unveiled new DNA-capacity tools for state and local partners, and said the campaign will be replicated nationwide over the next 95 days.
At a Martinsburg, West Virginia, event the FBI director announced the launch of Operation Summer Heat 2 and described it as a national, 95-day campaign to target violent crime, saying the effort builds on last year’s “Operation Summer Heat.”
The director said the initiative will rely on “state and local partners” and framed the event as a demonstration of interagency cooperation. “There is nothing this FBI does that we can accomplish without our state and local partners,” the director said.
He cited enforcement figures from last year’s surge as evidence of the initiative’s impact, saying, “Last year alone, Operation Summer Heat netted 8,600 arrest, 7,750 search warrants executed, 2,300 firearms taken off the street, and 45,000 kilograms of cocaine.” He also described results from a recent spring cleanup: “we have arrested 1,470 individuals … seizing nearly 1000 firearms … executing 50 580 search warrants and seeding 2,700 pounds of narcotics,” language used in the transcript. These numbers are presented here as the director reported them and have not been independently verified by this article.
The director also announced expanded forensic capacity for state and local agencies, describing “for the first time ever in large format the DNA tools” that, he said, will allow on-site swabbing and immediate checks against databases to surface outstanding warrants and links to co-conspirators. “That is moving at the speed in which we need to move to combat violent crime in this country,” he said.
Speakers thanked local partners, including the Martinsburg Police Department, Jefferson County SWAT, HSI SWAT and the DEA, and acknowledged cooperation across state lines with operations that the director said involved South Carolina and parts of Pennsylvania. He said the operation deployed multiple SWAT teams and about 100 FBI agents in the area to execute warrants and collect evidence.
The director framed the campaign as part of a broader administration priority, saying it was undertaken “under President Trump’s leadership and [the] attorney general” (as named in the transcript) and repeatedly invoked strong support for local police. He also described broad crime-reduction gains, saying the FBI had led “the charge to reduce homicides in this country by 20 points” and to reduce violent crime by “10 percentage points in every single state,” phrasing taken from his remarks.
The event closed with the director declaring Operation Summer Heat 2 officially open for business and thanking attendees. The director said the agency plans to replicate the operation nationwide over the next 95 days. No formal vote or local policy action was recorded at the event; the announcement described operational and enforcement plans rather than a legislative or budgeting decision.
